HP Q3 Earnings Cite Restructuring For Stifled Income

Quarterly Earnings for HP were reported today with Meg Whitman, the company's chief executive, noting that they're "still in the early stages of a multiyear turnaround." This comment in addition to assurances that HP was "making decent progress despite the headwinds" came amid news that Hewlett-Packard had a net quarterly losss of $8.9 billion dollars – aka $4.49 a share. The company has been in a rather tumultuous bit of a mix up over the past few years as major events in the mobile industry and computing have taken their toll across the whole of the manufacturer's hardware and software collection.

With 12 percent fewer notebook computers sold this past quarter compared to the same quarter last year and 23 percent fewer printers sold in that year-on-year comparison, HP did not have a whole lot of good news. Revenue was down each of HP's major units, with the company's total revenue in the fiscal quarter moving downward 5 percent to $29.7 billion. HP anticipated the loss all the way back on August 8th when the company announced a noncash charge of $8 billion in its services unit.

This noncash charge was attributed to its write-down of value in a 2008 acquisition of the consulting firm EDS, which was purchased for a measly $13.9 billion. Also announced earlier this year were 27,000 job cuts which HP has also noted they've taken a charge out of $1 billion altogether.

One year ago in this same financial quarter, HP's income was been reported at $1.9 billion, or 93 cents a share – this on a revenue of $31.2 billion. If the write downs are not considered, the slightly less-than-impressive $29.7 billion revenue this quarter is slightly greater than Wall Street analysts have reported – according to a survey of analysts by Thompson Reuters as earnings of 98 cents a share on revenue of $30.1 billion.

[via NYTimes]